


Blank Pages, Open Road

by je_gigote



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/je_gigote/pseuds/je_gigote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say write what you know. [A drabble about Sam.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank Pages, Open Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GiganticDarks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GiganticDarks/gifts).



They say _Write what you know_.

This is what Sam Winchester knows: pain and anger and abandonment and disappointing the only people he cares about.

When he was a kid, Sam thought maybe he’d be a writer. By the time he was 14, he’d already seen enough crazy stuff to inspire a whole series of books. Stuff he thought kids his age might like to read, stuff that couldn’t be real but was fun to read about. Scary stuff that kids would devour after bedtime under a blanket, reading with a flashlight, their eyes straining and heart pounding.

He kept a journal in his backpack, a battered Mead composition book full of short stories he’d start and never finish, lists of the places he’d been back and forth across America, names of monsters he’d helped his dad and Dean hunt down.

He thought his dad didn’t know about his notebook, but John caught Sam scribbling away from time to time when he glanced in the rearview mirror, the pen in his hand a steady recorder of a boy’s exploding imagination. It was good for the boy, John reasoned in his mind, to have an outlet to express himself. With all they’d seen, and John had a hard time talking about it all...he didn’t necessarily approve of all the time the kid spent with his damn nose in a book, but at least he wasn’t a troublemaker like Dean had turned out to be.

They all kept secrets from each other, better Sam’s was a safe world written between black and white mottled covers in blue ballpoint chickenscratch.

***********************

In high school, Sam loved the American classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, This Side of Paradise. Books whose characters and plots remained the same whether you were in Indiana or Arizona. Books whose landscapes he’d seen countless times already from the backseat of the Impala, landscapes blurred green or gold or brown as the car sped down two-lane highways in sun or rain or snow. He liked the history about the books--different times, the way they said things differently, the way people treated each other differently. Mostly, he liked that they made no mention of demons, or vampires, or werewolves, or ghosts.

Because he was learning to be a writer, he’d imitate their styles--Harper Lee, or John Steinbeck, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or even Hemingway or Capote. Put on their personalities as his own--tried to imagine what it would be like to write from a desk in New York City, or small-town Alabama, or Paris. To use words as a disguise, or to reveal incredible vulnerability--to Sam, that was what it meant to be a writer.

He thought about college. About how he really might be able to go--he got good grades, he liked to read, he paid attention in class. It was an escape, in a way, and it was the promise of a home--a life in one place for four years. He’d apply to schools in places where he could see himself staying after he graduated--getting a job as an editor or a journalist, buying a home, maybe even getting married.

John Winchester’s wanderlust was born out of revenge. Sam Winchester dreamed of a life lived within the walls of a single house, a green yard, a quiet, safe suburban street.

****************************************************

In college, Sam swapped out the notebooks for a laptop. He learned how to make outlines for a paper, how to research a subject, how to organize his ideas into a concise three-to-five-pages-with-bibliography. Years of hunting taught his brain to prioritize information, a skill that transferred beautifully to research papers, and Sam usually came away with an A.

He used papers and research as excuses to occupy his brain--to keep himself from the anger he felt toward his dad, the worry he felt for his brother, the fear he felt about the monsters he’d seen as a boy. He tacked on extra sources, searched stacks of books for the perfect quote, learned to read a bit of French and German so he could scour original works. He busied himself to the point of exhaustion in hopes that his dreams would be full of serif-barbed letters and the musty smell of faded pages instead of blood and screams.

The boyish dreams of being a writer drifted into something more specific, and Sam knew he wanted to go to law school--to be a public defender someday, helping people who were in a bad place (he knew all about that, at least). The tight, specific phrases in law textbooks presented Sam a challenge he’d happily dive into, and the solitary late-night light of a study carroll in the law library gave him a kind of gleeful thrill.

It was a plan for his life, and Sam should have known better that as a Winchester, his plans would always be disrupted.

Everything changed when he caught Dean breaking into his apartment late one night.

****************************************************

Sam Winchester doesn’t write much these days. Directions, shopping lists, notes to his brother about where he can be found, Latin spells copied from Bobby’s ancient tomes. Nothing sparked from his imagination, no stories about lives lived in Paris, or during the Roaring Twenties, or the Dust Bowl. No, his stories are too _real_ to be made up, but no publisher would ever believe him.

Besides, someone’s already told his story, made it into a book--a whole series of books--and it didn’t sell very well.

Sam doesn’t think he could do much better.


End file.
